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With the adoption of such initiatives as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and the College and Career Readiness Performance Index (CCRPI), there is increasing pressure for students to meet and exceed performance expectations. This is easier said than done, especially given that not all organizational structures are helpful to student performance. A quantitative, correlational study was done to determine the relationship between school organization and school performance within Georgia schools. Subgroup comparisons between high and low performing schools were included in analyses. Results showed that high organizational effectiveness was associated with high student performance outcomes. High performing schools had significantly higher organizational effectiveness than low performing schools. The findings of this study help teachers, administrators, and policy makers determine essential organizational themes that help students succeed. The use of positive organizational characteristics is encouraged in order for students to have much better success moving forward.

This nonexperimental survey research investigated whether enrollment, location, expenditures, percentage of free and reduced lunch and percentage of minority students influenced Georgia's superintendent and board chairperson satisfaction. In addition, this study investigated whether respondents' satisfaction could predict student achievement. Finally, this study investigated whether superintendents valued professional standards differently than board chairpersons. Findings revealed a great deal of satisfaction held and agreement between superintendents and board chairpersons, but no significant difference in satisfaction levels based on district enrollment, percentage of minority students, or district location. Board chairpersons of districts with higher percentages of students receiving free and reduced lunch were significantly less satisfied than board chairpersons of districts with lower percentages of students receiving free and reduced lunch. Board chairperson satisfaction significantly predicted student achievement and graduation rate. Finally, results illustrated superintendents ranked the importance of ethics significantly higher than board chairpersons.

During the early, pre-deployment planning phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the combined-force commander gave Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-West, or CJSOTF-W, the mission of interdicting ground-based time-sensitive targets, or [...]

Of all the species exposed naturally to the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) agent, the greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), a nondomesticated bovine from Africa, appears to be the most susceptible to [...]

Abstract Background Transmission of the prion disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) occurred accidentally to cattle and several other mammalian species via feed supplemented with meat and bone meal contaminated with infected bovine tissue. Prior to United Kingdom controls in 1996 on the feeding of mammalian meat and bone meal to farmed animals, the domestic chicken was potentially exposed to feed contaminated with the causal agent of BSE. Although confirmed prion diseases are unrecorded in avian species a study was undertaken to transmit BSE to the domestic chicken by parenteral and oral inoculations. Transmissibility was assessed by clinical monitoring, histopathological examinations, detection of a putative disease form of an avian prion protein (PrP) in recipient tissues and by mouse bioassay of tissues. Occurrence of a progressive neurological syndrome in the primary transmission study was investigated by sub-passage experiments. Results No clinical, pathological or bioassay evidence of transmission of BSE to the chicken was obtained in the primary or sub-passage experiments. Survival data showed no significant differences between control and treatment groups. Neurological signs observed, not previously described in the domestic chicken, were not associated with significant pathology. The diagnostic techniques applied failed to detect a disease associated form of PrP. Conclusion Important from a risk assessment perspective, the present study has established that the domestic chicken does not develop a prion disease after large parenteral exposures to the BSE agent or after oral exposures equivalent to previous exposures via commercial diets. Future investigations into the potential susceptibility of avian species to mammalian prion diseases require species-specific immunochemical techniques and more refined experimental models.

Abstract Background Given the theoretical proposal that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) could have originated from sheep scrapie, this study investigated the pathogenicity for cattle, by intracerebral (i.c.) inoculation, of two pools of scrapie agents sourced in Great Britain before and during the BSE epidemic. Two groups of ten cattle were each inoculated with pools of brain material from sheep scrapie cases collected prior to 1975 and after 1990. Control groups comprised five cattle inoculated with sheep brain free from scrapie, five cattle inoculated with saline, and for comparison with BSE, naturally infected cattle and cattle i.c. inoculated with BSE brainstem homogenate from a parallel study. Phenotypic characterisation of the disease forms transmitted to cattle was conducted by morphological, immunohistochemical, biochemical and biological methods. Results Disease occurred in 16 cattle, nine inoculated with the pre-1975 inoculum and seven inoculated with the post-1990 inoculum, with four cattle still alive at 83 months post challenge (as at June 2006). The different inocula produced predominantly two different disease phenotypes as determined by histopathological, immunohistochemical and Western immunoblotting methods and biological characterisation on transmission to mice, neither of which was identical to BSE. Whilst the disease presentation was uniform in all scrapie-affected cattle of the pre-1975 group, the post-1990 inoculum produced a more variable disease, with two animals sharing immunohistochemical and molecular profile characteristics with animals in the pre-1975 group. Conclusion The study has demonstrated that cattle inoculated with different pooled scrapie sources can develop different prion disease phenotypes, which were not consistent with the phenotype of BSE of cattle and whose isolates did not have the strain typing characteristics of the BSE agent on transmission to mice.

This study analyzed end-of-year scores on a second grade mathematics CBM to predict student performance on the third grade Georgia mathematics CRCT. The participants in the study were 1,016 third grade students from nine schools within five school districts in Georgia. Correlational research with a predictive design was used to determine if end-of-year CBMs Mathematics Computation (M -COMP) or Mathematics Concepts and Application (M-CAP) results in second grade can predict student mathematics performance on the third grade Georgia mathematics CRCT. Simple linear regression analyses were used. The results of the analyses indicated that scores on the 2014 third grade Georgia mathematics CRCT were positively related to scores on both the M-COMP and M-CAP assessments. The regression results even showed that the M-COMP or M-CAP could possibly be a predictor to the results of the Georgia mathematics CRCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]